Amazingly magical

With the theme Magic, Wura-Natasha Ogunji and Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze, two Nigerian female artists who believe in the same approach, style and form, dazzle with their hybrid of works that cut across continents and locations. Edozie Udeze who was at the opening ceremony in Lagos, reports on how the magical images of their art works held guests spellbound.

The theme of the exhibition is amazing, so magical are the works that when most visitors and art lovers who turned up for the opening programme saw some of the art works, they were truly convinced that the theme of the installations was right. The duo of Wura-Natasha Ogunji and Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze had to brainstorm on the theme and in the end came up with magic.

But what is Magic? Why chose magic to portray these array of works when the artists are not magicians or pretend to be wizards? But the word magic is a derivative of the forms and styles exhibited by these artists who although did not grow up in Nigeria but have their ideas fertilized based on their experiences across different worlds and locations. This is why most of their works look bizarre, away from the everyday routine already known in the local parlance.

For them both, the art of visual has no limitation and so it is proper to continue to engage in more new forms and ideas. In an interview, Ogunji said, “yes, my most recent drawings are inspired by the experience of living in Lagos. I love those moments of unexpected beauty, humour, quiet stillness and connection that occur amidst all of the action. The wave signals, those lines that move between the DJ and the Ife head, are about those moments. They are about the profound beauty that is present in everyday contradictions. The DJ in the drawings sees those connections.”

For the few years Ogunji has been in Lagos, she has seen and experienced enough to help her zero down her gaze on the issues that make Lagos the heartbeat of the continent of Africa. “When you see the world from multiple perceptions, then what?,” Osuji queried. “Is there a moment when none of that matters? When we have to choose a perceptive and live within that? If we don’t, will we be constantly floating, unmoored, wandering?”

In one of her works titled three birds, done on thread, ink and graphite trace paper, she portrays a classical lady caught between two worlds. In her local gele (head-tie) there is an admixture of Western and Yoruba fashions. While the head-tie is local, her other attires depict a woman in the throes of confusion. Yet, Ogunji depicts her deep sense of artistic excellence for which she has been known across America where she grew up and Nigeria where she has her roots.

However, the central theme or if you like features that define most of these works is peace. The presence of pidgin or dove, a type of bird that conveys peace shows that both artists are ambassadors of sorts; pidgin conveys a message of purity, of the universality of love and concern for human progress. The white pidgin symbolizes such and these works go deep into the human consciousness to reignite that interest.

In her own works, Amanze confirms her true recourse to the deep recesses of colour and different forms of styles. She said, “I think with some of those earlier drawings, I was developing the language for this current body of work. The work indeed began in Nigeria and the experience of living there was in many ways a visual overload. I’ve been able to edit some of that initial language, and part of that choice was getting larger in scale- to allow for more open space.”

Her ideas and conceptions came to fruition more as she enumerates further: “I recently made a drawing with a lot of white space. A lot. And when I finished I had to resist the urge to fill it. To put something there… to say more. In my head, it was like who do I think I am? Isn’t minimalism for white artists? No. But I needed the drawing to be as it was. So I silenced the opposition and left it with what I thought was the perfect amount of space, even if it was a lot. There is a delicate balancing act that happens in the work. I see this in Wura’s works too.” Thus, the theme magic was created; created purposely to unmask these hybrids of thorough experimentations.

But Amanze did not end there. Her love for natural beauty explains the profundity of colours and juxtaposition in all their works. “Beauty is not something either of us can or desire to escape from. I am not ashamed of that word as it relates to my work. I am also aware of a large and endless historical conversation around it. It’s loaded. It gets into craft, design, the decorative… I’ve been accused of using it as a ploy, that the use of green glitter or gold or iridescent pinks is to catch people’s eyes.”

Now, Amanze grew up hating the pink colour. But how come it has now come to be the colour she uses most for which critics often pick holes with her. “Now, thinking that pink means pretty is far too easy. That’s not how I see it at all. The green glitter comes from a story I wrote of these girls who were running together in the woods. Now, none of that ever matters. What matters now is that it is never a ploy.”

And so together these two Nigerian female artists, who were trained both in America and the UK have been brought together by their ardent love for magical things. Magic is one word that binds them together to have fifteen works that are currently showing at the Omenka Gallery, Lagos. At the opening ceremony last weekend, it was obvious the works exposed a lot about the human society and what the artists have lived with over the years. Even though Ogunji worried that the works are too beautiful to portray their core originality, but she concurred that this beauty is also the centre-piece of the works. “Oh, the story ends there. It is not that I am trying to imply or impugn one… I have the desire or talent for that. It just doesn’t come to the page for me. I like the beauty of the awkward and almost and the not quite expected.”

This and more explain the innermost poise of a visual artist. And this is what these two have brought to bear on these experiments that are not only unique but magical in different forms and methods.